So what horrible concoction have the Jets gulped down to trigger this Jekyll-and-Hyde-like transformation?

When last seen on home ice, this team was putting the finishing touches on a 3-1-1 start, causing hearts to warm and flowers to sprout in even the most unlikely of places.

They were disciplined, resilient and patient, playing head coach Claude Noel’s defence-first game to a tee, give or take a few minutes here, a few there.

It seemed the former Atlanta Thrashers were growing up before our eyes, shedding their underwhelming past and well on their way to forging a new identity.

Three road games and 18 goals against later, they return to the cold, harsh reality of being a work in progress — minus the progress.

The Florida Panthers must have come in here wondering which outfit is going to show up, Tuesday: the one that played them close to the vest through two periods in Florida last week, or the one whose game went south, to the tune of five goals against, in the third.

“You go from doing great to the wheels falling off,” Noel said, referring mainly to discipline. “The problem we run into, we end up shooting ourself on the foot, especially that game in Tampa. That doesn’t help anything.”

In their last game, the Jets took penalties like they were grapes against the Lightning — in bunches. And they didn’t discriminate: there were dumb ones, marginal ones and lazy ones.

The rotten, three-game skid that’s resulted has left Noel with a sour taste in his mouth, and won’t do anything for his planned speech at the U of M Bisons hockey dinner, Wednesday.

“There’s not a lot of humour in the soul right now,” he acknowledged.

It’s the polar opposite of how he felt 10 days ago.

Did that win over the Penguins really happen?

“That game against Pittsburgh, we grew as a team,” Chris Thorburn said.

Sure. But like a dandelion on chemicals. A week later, it’s scraggly as all get-out.

Noel says he doesn’t plan on ranting and raving anymore. Presumably, he took care of that while watching his team’s structure crumble before his eyes.

“The coaching staff and leadership in this room has done a good job of keeping it positive and understanding that we’ve grown over the course of the year,” Thorburn continued. “From last year, we’re a totally different team.”

You wonder, though, if the last three games have exposed some fragility. It seems when things go wrong, they go (ital) really (ital) wrong.

“No. I haven’t noticed anything,” Jokinen said. “It’s a full, 60-minute game. And there’s a lot of highs and lows during the game. That’s what you have to learn as a player and as a team.

“There’s going to be momentum changes. You watch the Super Bowl, they turn the power off and it changed the whole game.”